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Eight months since the first lockdown and here we are again.

On Thursday, England will be placed into a second national shutdown for at least four weeks.

It is a giant U-turn from a prime minister that for weeks has been insisting a national lockdown would not just be unnecessary, but a "disaster" for the country, bringing with it huge misery.

The prime minister was told by his scientific advisory group weeks ago - 21 September to be exact - that a circuit breaker "should be considered for immediate effect" alongside a ban on all household mixing and the closure of bars, restaurants, cafes, indoor gyms and hairdressers to "return COVID-19 incidence to low levels".

He decided to ignore that advice, even as some of his allies whispered that a national lockdown looked inevitable. Now, five weeks later, he has been forced to act.

It is deeply uncomfortable for Boris Johnson.

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Instead of leading the UK from the front, he looks like he's following the footsteps of other national leaders - Nicola Sturgeon, Arlene Foster, Mark Drakeford - who followed the scientific advice and put Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales into far tougher restrictions sooner in the hope they can emerge from lockdown next month as England hunkers down for a long winter.

He has also opened up a flank to Sir Keir Starmer who saw the writing on the wall after the scientists' advice recommending a circuit breaker was published earlier this month and demanded that national lockdown.

At the time the prime minister accused him of "political opportunism".

Now "Captain Hindsight" looks like he has the foresight the prime minister lacked.

What you can and can't do after new measures come in

Cabinet colleagues briefed by the PM on Saturday also told me it was deeply personally uncomfortable for a political leader who considers himself a libertarian to force England into further restrictions.

But with the second wave of coronavirus threatening to be more deadly that the first and the NHS on the brink, Mr Johnson had run out of options.

Failure to act he said on Saturday "could see deaths in this country running at several thousand a day, a peak of mortality even higher than what we saw in April".

The NHS would be "forced to choose which patients to treat, who would get oxygen and who wouldn't, who would live and who would die".

Now the question is not whether the national lockdown is a disaster, but rather whether the prime minister's decision not to act earlier may in the end precipitate an even bigger disaster, as 56 million people face now a longer shutdown, with more lives at risk and the NHS under significantly more threat than it might have been had he acted sooner.

When I asked Mr Johnson on Saturday whether he regretted not following the scientific advice more closely, he defended his decision to "balance that advice with the consequences for people's lives"

"I'm not going to pretend to you these judgments aren't incredibly difficult. They are incredibly difficult. We have to change with the changing pattern of the virus," he told me.

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The data published by the government on Saturday points to a worsening scenario and the difficulties besetting Mr Johnson are being repeated in other European nations also grappling with the second edge of this disease.

But the prime minister also chose to discard the scientific advice recommending tougher measures back in September, as he leaned into the Treasury and his Conservative backbenchers and away from his scientific experts.

What no one can say is whether this lockdown now will be enough to reduce the rate of infections in order that we can see our family and friends at Christmas once more.

There are fears in government that as frustration and fatigue kicks in, compliance will fall. The prime minister once again has implored us to stay home to protect the NHS and save lives.

But is it all too little too late? And how damaging will that be not just to the prime minister but to the people he leads.